Set centuries in the future, Polaris tells the story of an interstellar starship lost in uncharted space. To get home again Captain Sam Fredericks, Valerie Young and the crew of the star cruiser Polaris must defeat an implacable enemy and solve the mystery of an impossible planet. Their discoveries will change humanity forever - if they survive.

United Worlds plans to begin production in Fall 2009. Principal photography will take place at studios in Maryland and on location in the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia region.

Ah, wonderful; it's great to see an original production. The "implacable enemy" and "change humanity forever" bits made me kind of smirk, but I'll be happy to see this develop. The spaceship model looks great.

The "implacable enemy" and "change humanity forever" bits made me kind of smirk...

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Thanks. I read a lot of back-cover blurbs on 1950s and 1960s science fiction novels in order to compose that.

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Ah, retro appeal. Even better. One of the things I like about the ship is that it's not the fashionable "battleship gray, rundown tenement" look that it's almost impossible to get away from these days. That's a nice clip, too.

There's a topic in Trek Art here that goes into a lot of the design process for the ship - it hasn't been updated in about six months, and we've taken various aspects of the vessel in different directions since then. But the basic layout and particularly the interior deck plans remain pretty much as aridas put them together.

^Looking over the cross-section, you can see how genius the layout is from a production standpoint. It would only take a few sets, maybe even just one or two, that can be redressed to be all sections of the ship. Film all your scenes on the bridge, then rearrange some of the consoles and you got the CIC or an engineering section. Same with the quarters, you'd probably even be able to use the bridge set walls and set up bunks or, for senior officers, set up furniture.

^Looking over the cross-section, you can see how genius the layout is from a production standpoint. It would only take a few sets, maybe even just one or two, that can be redressed to be all sections of the ship. Film all your scenes on the bridge, then rearrange some of the consoles and you got the CIC or an engineering section. Same with the quarters, you'd probably even be able to use the bridge set walls and set up bunks or, for senior officers, set up furniture.

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And aridas was definitely taking those production requirements into account.

As the project has evolved and the story requirements have become more specific, some of what's on the cross-section has been superceded - we don't have a separate CIC, for example, and most if not all navigation functions are located on the command deck. But for the most part this drawing is still what I use for reference.

It just makes sense to orient the deck floors along the axis of acceleration, IMAO, and I like that it echoes the way old-fashioned "rocket ships" always seemed to be designed in 1950s science fiction and speculations about near-future Moon and Mars missions. The ship has artificial gravity for use when not under acceleration, based on what aridas calls a bit of "bolognium" whereby the "gravity generators" are charged with "stored momentum" while the ship is accelerating.